eBay's censorship of auctions made it into yesterday's Wall Street Journal (January 22, 2002). Legal experts expressed concern over eBay's practice of exercising editorial control over items, observing that it was contrary to its original "open platform" philosophy. "The question is, if eBay is going to begin to exercise editorial control for items like this, you have to wonder, what other things will they try to exercise control over?" said Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University. The article was prompted by the removal of political buttons designed and sold by Keith Shirey, a retired California professor.
eBay has an "Offensive Material" policy, which covers items like crime scene material http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/png-offensive.html. But there have been many instances like Shirey's auctions where eBay has gone beyond the Offensive Material policy to remove auctions. Last September, eBay suspended auction items with the words "World Trade Center" or "Pentagon" in the title and then further modified its policy by allowing "positive" commemorative items that relate to the 9-11 terrorist attacks to be sold in its "Auction for America" charity listings, but not in regular listings.
In June, the eBay community exploded in fury over the "Jacket Auction" controversy. eBay pulled the auction of a "Shooting Star" jacket (eBay members earn Shooting Stars when they rack up 10,000 unique positive feedbacks). The eBay seller who listed the auction had protested a new eBay policy in the auction description. (See an archive copy of the auction description here: http://home.inreach.com/nehisoda/test/jacket.htm.)
Auction message boards lit up protesting eBay's removal of the auction, and a 1960s-style protest took place, with users selling on eBay hand-made pictures depicting their feelings about eBay's censorship of the Jacket Auction. (http://www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abn/y01/m06/i22/s03).
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